Abstract:

Both musical sound and visual images have the ability to communicate. Visual images often convey explicit (verbalizeable) content, while musical sound lies most often in the implicit, nonverbalizeable realm. Music perceived as organized by a listener follows a culture-dependent rule system, differing from that found in verbal communication. Numerous investigations have determined specific cognitive strategies utilized in musical listening. Likewise, there have been similar studies devoted to strategies utilized in the cognition of visual images. Recently, there has been a significant amount of interest in the perceptual interaction between the auditory and visual systems in multi-modal contexts. Both psychologists and musicians are beginning to investigate the manner in which a stimulus perceived in one sensory modality may affect the cognitive processing of a stimulus in a separate modality. Beginning in the 1950s, a series of psychophysical investigations revealed cross-modal influences using simple stimuli. A number of investigators are presently attempting to incorporate more complex stimuli to determine the interrelationship of auditory and visual cues processed simultaneously in ecologically valid experimental contexts. Drawing upon research carried out by the author, this paper will highlight methods utilized successfully in such investigations, summarizing results and proposing future directions.